Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that can be found in lichens, hemp leaves, and mushrooms. It is also savored in fermented foods such as wine, soya sauce, or saki (Sasaki, T. (1989) Production technology of erythritol. Nippon Nogeikagaku Kaishi 63: 1130-1132). Erythritol is a four-carbon polyol, which possesses several properties such as sweetness (about 70-80% of sucrose), tooth friendliness, very low calorific value (0.3 kcal/g, a tenth of sucrose), non-carcinogenicity and, unlike other polyols, causes little, if any, gastro-intestinal discomfort (Harald and Bruxelles (1993) Starch/Starke 45:400-405).
Traditional industrial erythritol production is carried out by adding catalysts such as hydrogen and nickel to the raw material sugars under the environment of high temperature and high pressure. Another process is performed by the chemo-reduction of raw materials such as meso-tartarate (Kent, P. W., and Wood, K. R. (1964) J. Chem. Soc. 2493-2497) or erythrose (Otey, F. H., and Sloan, J. W. (1961) Ind. Eng. Chem. 53:267) to obtain erythritol. In addition, erythritol can be produced by a number of microorganisms. Such organisms include high osmophilic yeasts, e.g., Pichia, Candida, Torulopsis, Trigonopsis, Moniliella, Aureobasidium, and Trichosporon sp. (Onishi, H. (1967) Hakko Kyokaish 25:495-506; Hajny et al. (1964) Appl. Microbiol. 12:240-246; Hattor, K., and Suziki, T. (1974) Agric. Biol. Chem. 38:1203-1208; Ishizuka, H., et al. (1989) J. Ferment. Bioeng. 68:310-314.)